Back Room Girl: By the author of Paul Temple

Miss Silvers recapitulated briefly what had happened. ‘Joe hit him a little too hard,’ she concluded, ‘and it was quite a time before he came round.’

‘I should have thought you Special Air Service lads were tougher than that,’ said the little man. ‘Nosey-parkering as usual, were you? I thought you’d retired from newspaper work to become a famous author.’

‘I had, damn it! I suppose Bill Darkis told you. But can I help it if I go for a stroll and am set on by thugs and vagabonds and heaven knows who? You’re a fine one to talk, anyway, if it comes to that. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in London tracking down criminals.’

‘Wilfred’ – Chief Inspector Leyland, to give him his full name, – smiled. ‘I was, I was,’ he said, ‘but the Government found me another little job, and Scotland Yard’s having to carry on without my invaluable services for the time being.’

Though he was joking when he said ‘invaluable services’, Chief Inspector Leyland was right, as Roy was well aware. They had met on a score of cases which he had been covering for the Tribune and Roy knew him as one of the most astute officers at Scotland Yard. Few equalled, and none surpassed, his knowledge of London’s underworld. His shabby, shambling appearance belied him, for beneath that sandy head was a first-class brain, which Roy also knew had been employed during the war on the side of the counter-espionage branch of the Secret Service. What Roy did not know was how many spies had faced the firing-squad as a result of the little man’s efforts. Was he still doing that kind of work? he wondered. Would that account for this strange reunion?

‘Well, come on,’ he said impatiently, ‘how much longer do I have to wait for an explanation? What’s it all about?’

Leyland looked at Miss Silvers. ‘How much have you told him?’ he asked.

‘Not as little as I intended,’ she replied, a trifle sheepishly, ‘but you know what newspapermen are.’

Leyland smiled. ‘I do, I do,’ he said. He had a habit, which some people found irritating, of repeating the first phrase of a sentence. ‘Especially this one,’ he added.

‘Yes, but I never broke a confidence,’ Roy reminded him, ‘so you might as well come clean. You know that if you don’t tell me, I’ll never rest until I find out what it’s all about.’

‘I know, I know,’ snapped the Chief Inspector. ‘That’s what’s worrying me, and if it were any routine job you might be able to help us. But this is rather different. It isn’t a matter of cat burglars, safe-cracking, or even murder – yet. It’s something far more important. I’d be for the high jump good and proper if they thought I’d whispered a word of this to anyone, however well I knew him, or however trustworthy and reliable he might be. But I don’t quite see how we can keep you here indefinitely. He hesitated a moment, then added, ‘There’s just a remote chance that you might – I say might – be able to help us.’

‘I should damned well think you can’t keep me here indefinitely,’ retorted Roy indignantly. ‘Of all the nerve!’

‘All right, all right,’ said the Chief Inspector soothingly, ‘there’s no need to get excited. Well, here goes, though if you so much as breath a word that I’ve told you anything I’ll have your hide. This tin mine has been converted into a secret Government laboratory – at least we thought it was secret – with Miss Silvers in charge of quite a large scientific staff. It was begun before the war ended. After Miss Silvers had finished her work on the magnetic mine, about which I expect you know, she was put in charge of a small group of scientists to work on an atomic radio-controlled rocket, with a speed and explosive power which are quite unprecedented.’

Roy whistled quietly. ‘So that’s it,’ he said. ‘No wonder you didn’t want any visitors. I don’t blame you.’

‘I didn’t think you would,’ went on the Chief Inspector, ‘when you knew. Just one of these things could completely wipe out a city as big as London or New York, and a hell of a sight more besides. I don’t know all the scientific details – those are Miss Silvers’ department; I’m concerned only with the security side of it – but I know enough to realize that no one inside or outside this country must get the secret, especially now that the work is nearly finished and the first completed rocket is being assembled.

‘Every man Jack here,’ he continued, ‘scientific staff, servants, guards, all hand-picked and vetted, is sworn to absolute secrecy. Only a very few people, not even their own relatives, know where they are, or what they are doing. Indeed, only a few of the staff know why they are here. The guards and servants certainly don’t.

‘And only Miss Silvers among the scientists here knows the whole thing from A to Z. The others know only their own particular part of the work. No one leaves here, or returns, except at night. All supplies and parts are brought in at night, quietly by sea, not by noisy lorries which might attract attention. No one has any contact with the village life. At intervals they are allowed to go home, leaving at night and returning at night on foot.’

‘What about plans?’ asked Roy. ‘Isn’t there anything on paper?’

‘There is,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘but there’s no complete plan, not even in London. The plans are divided into a dozen sections, each in a different part of the country, but they’re not even under lock and key.’

‘Good God!’ The exclamation came from the shocked Roy. ‘Why ever not?’

‘We thought it would be better that way. For instance, there’s one part in an ordinary envelope in the tobacco jar on my mantelpiece at home. There’s another in a deed box in a solicitor’s office in Taunton. There’s a third among the manuscripts in the British Museum, and so on. Any ordinary person, if he happened to see them, would not understand the first thing about them, though a scientist who had worked on atomic projects might get a glimmering. But we couldn’t take the risk of anyone getting hold of the complete plan, so it was divided, as I’ve told you. And it’s a good thing it was.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘Because we have reason to suspect that there’s a criminal organization in this country that’s doing its damnedest to get the plans of the atomic rocket.’

Roy whistled thoughtfully.

‘This must be since my time in Fleet Street.’ He smiled a trifle ruefully at the thought that things had already moved on so far since his crime-reporting days.

‘I’m not saying it’s generally known,’ put in Leyland quickly. ‘We’re not giving them any publicity – in fact we daren’t.’

‘Any idea who’s behind it all?’

‘Leyland frowned.

‘Not a word about this, mind,’ he repeated.

‘Of course not,’ said Roy, somewhat impatiently.

‘Do you think we ought to tell him all this, Inspector?’ queried Karen Silvers anxiously, a gleam of apprehension in her grey-blue eyes. ‘After all, what’s to stop him ringing up his old newpaper as soon as he gets out of here—’

‘I’ll take a chance on that, Miss Silvers,’ replied Leyland drily. ‘He’s always played straight with me, and he’s a useful man to have around at times.’

‘Thank you, Inspector,’ said Roy ironically. ‘But I won’t be of much use unless I know the person I’m up against. You know my weakness for facts.’

The Inspector slowly filled his pipe and lit it.

‘This may come as a bit of a surprise to you, Roy,’ he said slowly, as he held a match to Karen’s cigarette. ‘And you must realize it’s quite off the record. There’s a lot to be checked yet before we can grab this customer.’

‘I take it there’s no time to be wasted,’ said Roy meaningly as he took three fierce puffs at his cigarette. ‘Come on, Inspector – who is this mystery man?’

Leyland passed his hand over his thin sandy hair, and said in a casual voice, ‘You’ve heard of Fabian Delouris, I suppose.’

Roy looked up quickly.

‘Delouris – the armaments king?’ he exclaimed with a low whistle. ‘But I thought he was worth millions.’

‘He is worth millions,’ nodded Leyland.

‘Then why should he go in for crime at his time of life?’

‘There are other things besides money – such as power, for instance,’ murmured Leyland. ‘As to crime – well,when a man’s been in the armaments racket for twenty years I don’t suppose he has many morals left. He did quite a bit of gun-running and stirring up revolutions in his young days, you know … before he dealt in a really big way.’

‘A case of “once a crook”, eh?’ mused Roy, looking across at Karen Silvers, who was smoking her cigarette and apparently lost in her own thoughts.

‘Why do you think Delouris should suddenly break out at this stage?’ he continued. Leyland shrugged.

‘Don’t ask me to define his motives. Maybe he thinks the man who controls the atom will be the king-pin of existence … maybe it’s just a fit of panic that rifles and machine-guns won’t count for much in the armaments market from now on, and he simply wants to corner atomic weapons to keep ’em off the market.’

‘What makes you suspect him, anyhow?’

The Inspector smiled. ‘I’m not going into all that now, Roy. As you know, we’ve our own methods of finding out things, and several men we’ve been checking on have led us straight to Delouris in one way or another. As far as we can judge, he’s got a pretty hefty organization behind him, and it’s going to be none too pleasant when we get to grips with them. They’re a tough lot of boys – several ex-German prisoners who escaped, a sprinkling of deserters from the American Forces when they were over here, one or two old lags we know well enough, and a couple of pilots from the Australian Air Force, who fly his special private ’planes, Oh yes, it’s quite a set-up, I can tell you. Quite a set-up!’

Roy shook his head a trifle dubiously.

‘I’m still surprised that a man like Delouris, who can make his millions without much effort, would think such a gamble is worth the risk.’

The Inspector carefully stubbed out his cigarette.